Biological Physics
Eric Siggia
Adjunct Professor of Physics
Box 25, Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-327-8546
AB, Harvard College, 1971. PhD, Physics, Harvard University, 1972.
Research Areas
Biophysics: statistical mechanics of DNA, folding kinetics of nucleic acids, stochastic gene expression, cell cycle in yeast. Bioinformatics of gene regulation in evolution and development, structure of DNA binding proteins, morphology of early vertebrate development
Current Research
In collaboration with a yeast genetics lab at Rockefeller, we are doing time lapse imaging of multiplying yeast cells in an environment that can be temporally controlled. The goals are to understand the origins of cell to cell variability, its affects on fitness, how a cell controls its size, and devise models of the cell cycle oscillator based on dynamical systems methods.
We are collaborating with a microbiology lab at Rockefeller to use whole genome sequencing to explore how pathenogenic bacteria become resistant to antibiotics. A long term goal is to predict all developmental pathways that can be evolved by continuous improvement of a plausible fitness function. One success was vertebrate somitogenesis (i.e., the repeated structure of ribs and backbone), and we are testing our model with a group at the Stowers Institute. At Rockefeller we collaborate with a frog development lab, also interested in stem cells to develop phenomenological models of differentiation.
All projects involve a tight integration of experiment, data analysis and modeling, see my Rockefeller web site http://www.physics.rockefeller.edu/siggia for more details of specific projects.